It was to this Mr. Sanborn, that Brown first suggested his scheme to raise $30,000 cash, to arm and equip a company of "fifty volunteer-regulars" for the defense of Kansas settlers. Mr. Sanborn was impressed, deeply so, and undertook to promote the proposition. Also, he undertook to promote Brown's scheme to have the Legislatures of Massachusetts and New York appropriate $100,000 each, to reimburse the Brown family for losses its members had sustained while "fighting" in Kansas; and ever thereafter had been Brown's faithful and efficient servant. He was a member of the "Secret War Committee" of six, and had reason to think, and probably did think, that Brown had taken him into his full confidence. He says: Although Brown communicated freely to the four persons just named,--Theodore Parker, Dr. Howe, Mr. Stearns and Col. Higginson,--his plans of attack and defense in Virginia, it is not known that he spoke to any but me of his purpose to surprise the Arsenal and town of Harper's Ferry.... It is probable that in 1858 Brown had not definitely resolved to seize Harper's Ferry; yet he spoke of it to me beside his coal fire in the American House, putting it as a question, rather, without expressing his own purpose. I questioned him a little about it; but it then passed from my mind, and I did not think of it again until the attack had been made a year and a half afterwards.[399] Thus Mr. Sanborn acknowledges that Brown had not entrusted to him the secret of his intentions, and thereby disqualifies himself as an authority upon Brown's plans, or as having correct information concerning what he intended to do in Virginia. It is more than probable that upon the occasion to which Mr. Sanborn refers, Brown contemplated confiding to him his plans for the conquest of the South by means of an insurrection of the slaves and the massacre of the slave-holding population, and intended to offer him a position upon his staff. Brown and Forbes had laid plans for their campaign, with Harper's Ferry as the base of operations, as early as January, 1857, and in pursuance thereof had ordered the thousand spears with which to arm the blacks for the opening horror.